The 'Sonic Attacks' On The U.S. Embassy In Cuba May Have Actually Been Something Far Less Sinister

Photo by Yander Zamora/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Jan. 07, 2019 05:55PM EST

The world was understandably vexed in 2016 and 2017 when U.S. diplomats and their families in Cuba reported hearing strange noises which were soon credited with a host of symptoms––among them dizziness, vertigo and ringing in the ears––they experienced in their wake. Diplomats described the noise as "piercing" and like "grinding metal."

Scientists now believe they've solved the mystery.

Scientists say the sounds of alleged "sonic attacks" on the U.S. Embassy in Cuba are actually the call of Caribbean Lovelorn crickets.

The scientists were quick to point out that their findings do not rule out the possibility of an attack on U.S. diplomats; they just wanted the world to know that the recording of the sound plaguing U.S. diplomats was not a sonic weapon.

"There's plenty of debate in the medical community over what, if any, physical damage there is to these individuals," Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley toldThe New York Times. "All I can say fairly definitively is that the A.P.-released recording is of a cricket, and we think we know what species it is."

Stubbs says when he first heard the sound, he was "reminded of insects he came across while doing field work in the Caribbean."

Together with Dr. Fernando Montealegre-Z of the University of Lincoln in England, they found that the acoustic patterns were similar to those exhibited by certain kinds of insects. They deduced that the song of the Indies short-tailed cricket "matches, in nuanced detail, the A.P. recording in duration, pulse repetition rate, power spectrum, pulse rate stability, and oscillations per pulse."

"They're incredibly loud," Stubbs said of the crickets. "You can hear them from inside a diesel truck going forty miles an hour on the highway."

Inconsistencies in the Associated Press's recording are likely because the recording was made indoors and not in the wild.

"The AP recording also exhibits frequency decay in individual pulses, a distinct acoustic signature of cricket sound production," the men wrote.

The old zodiac signs are so played out—they've been around for hundreds of years, and it's time for something new! Fortunately, Twitter user @g_pratimaaa has come up with a way to determine your new and improved zodiac marker. Simply type "Florida man" and your birthday into Google and whatever comes up represents you at a cosmic level!

Anyone near downtown Los Angeles on the evening of Wednesday, March 20th, may have just thought the Earth was in a bit more danger than we're generally comfortable with. Countless people looked up that night to see what appeared to be a meteor falling from the sky into the greater LA area, and many captured video of the event.

Pixar has made plenty of beloved movies at this point (20, as of 2018), and they continue to create more. One of the most highly anticipated is Toy Story 4, and in the recently released trailer, Pixar made a reference to one of their earliest films.